Johnson’s habitual mode of life is described by Dr. Maxwell, one of Boswell’s friends, who made his acquaintance in 1754. Maxwell generally called upon him about twelve, and found him in bed or declaiming over his tea. A levée, chiefly of literary men, surrounded him; and he seemed to be regarded as a kind of oracle to whom every one might resort for advice or instruction. After talking all the morning, he dined at a tavern, staying late and then going to some friend’s house for tea, over which he again loitered for a long time. Maxwell is puzzled to know when he could have read or written. The answer seems to be pretty obvious; namely, that after the publication of the Dictionary he wrote very little, and that, when he did write, it was generally in a brief spasm of feverish energy. One may understand that Johnson should have frequently reproached himself for his indolence; though he seems to have occasionally comforted himself by thinking that he could do good by talking as well as by writing. He said that a man should have a part of his life to himself; and compared himself to a physician retired to a small town from practice in a great city. Boswell, in spite of this, said that he still wondered that Johnson had not more pleasure in writing than in not writing. “Sir,” replied the oracle, “you may wonder.”
I will now endeavour, with Boswell’s guidance, to describe a few of the characteristic scenes which can be fully enjoyed in his pages alone. The first must be the introduction of Boswell to the sage. Boswell had come to London eager for the acquaintance of literary magnates. He already knew Goldsmith, who had inflamed his desire for an introduction to Johnson. Once when Boswell spoke of Levett, one of Johnson’s dependents, Goldsmith had said, “he is poor and honest, which is recommendation enough to Johnson.” Another time, when Boswell had wondered at Johnson’s kindness to a man of bad character, Goldsmith had replied, “He is now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson.” Boswell had hoped for an introduction through the elder Sheridan; but Sheridan never forgot the contemptuous phrase in which Johnson had referred to his fellow-pensioner. Possibly Sheridan had heard of one other Johnsonian remark. “Why, sir,” he had said, “Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.” At another time he said, “Sheridan cannot bear me; I bring his declamation to a point.” “What influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon the language of this great country by his narrow exertions? Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover to show light at Calais.” Boswell, however, was acquainted with Davies, an actor turned bookseller, now chiefly remembered by a line in Churchill’s Rosciad which is said to have driven him from the stage —
He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone.
Boswell was drinking tea with Davies and his wife in their back parlour when Johnson came into the shop. Davies, seeing him through the glass-door, announced his approach to Boswell in the spirit of Horatio addressing Hamlet: “Look, my Lord, it comes!” Davies introduced the young Scotchman, who remembered Johnson’s proverbial prejudices. “Don’t tell him where I come from!” cried Boswell. “From Scotland,” said Davies roguishly. “Mr. Johnson,” said Boswell, “I do indeed come from Scotland; but I cannot help it!” “That, sir,” was the first of Johnson’s many retorts to his worshipper, “is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help.”
Poor Boswell was stunned; but he recovered when Johnson observed to Davies, “What do you think of Garrick? He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams because he knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth three shillings.” “O, sir,” intruded the unlucky Boswell, “I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a trifle to you.” “Sir,” replied Johnson sternly, “I have known David Garrick longer than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to me on the subject.” The second blow might have crushed a less intrepid curiosity. Boswell, though silenced, gradually recovered sufficiently to listen, and afterwards to note down parts of the conversation. As the interview went on, he even ventured to make a remark or two, which were very civilly received; Davies consoled him at his departure by assuring him that the great man liked him very well. “I cannot conceive a more humiliating position,” said Beauclerk on another occasion, “than to be clapped on the back by Tom Davies.” For the present, however, even Tom Davies was a welcome encourager to one who, for the rest, was not easily rebuffed. A few days afterwards Boswell ventured a call, was kindly received and detained for some time by “the giant in his den.” He was still a little afraid of the said giant, who had shortly before administered a vigorous retort to his countryman Blair. Blair had asked Johnson whether he thought that any man of a modern age could have written Ossian. “Yes, sir,” replied Johnson, “many men, many women, and many children.” Boswell, however, got on very well, and before long had the high honour of drinking a bottle of port with Johnson at the Mitre, and receiving, after a little autobiographical sketch, the emphatic approval, “Give me your hand, I have taken a liking to you.”
In a very short time Boswell was on sufficiently easy terms with Johnson, not merely to frequent his levées but to ask him to dinner at the Mitre. He gathered up, though without the skill of his later performances, some fragments of the conversational feast. The great man aimed another blow or two at Scotch prejudices. To an unlucky compatriot of Boswell’s, who claimed for his country a great many “noble wild prospects,” Johnson replied, “I believe, sir, you have a great many, Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, sir, let me tell you the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England.” Though Boswell makes a slight remonstrance about the “rude grandeur of Nature” as seen in “Caledonia,” he sympathized in this with his teacher. Johnson said afterwards, that he never knew any one with “such a gust for London.” Before long he was trying Boswell’s tastes by asking him in Greenwich Park, “Is not this very fine?” “Yes, sir,” replied the promising disciple, “but not equal to Fleet Street.” “You are right, sir,” said the sage; and Boswell illustrates his dictum by the authority of a “very fashionable baronet,” and, moreover, a baronet from Rydal, who declared that the fragrance of a May evening in the country might be very well, but that he preferred the smell of a flambeau at the playhouse. In more serious moods Johnson delighted his new disciple by discussions upon theological, social, and literary topics. He argued with an unfortunate friend of Boswell’s, whose mind, it appears, had been poisoned by Hume, and who was, moreover, rash enough to undertake the defence of principles of political equality. Johnson’s view of all propagators of new opinions was tolerably simple. “Hume, and other sceptical innovators,” he said, “are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.” On another occasion poor Boswell, not yet acquainted with the master’s prejudices, quoted with hearty laughter a “very strange” story which Hume had told him of Johnson. According to Hume, Johnson had said that he would stand before a battery of cannon to restore Convocation to its full powers. “And would I not, sir?” thundered out the sage with flashing eyes and threatening gestures. Boswell judiciously bowed to the storm, and diverted Johnson’s attention. Another manifestation of orthodox prejudice was less terrible. Boswell told Johnson that he had heard a Quaker woman preach. “A woman’s preaching,” said Johnson, “is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
So friendly had the pair become, that when Boswell left England to continue his studies at Utrecht, Johnson accompanied him in the stage-coach to Harwich, amusing him on the way by his frankness of address to fellow-passengers, and by the voracity of his appetite. He gave him some excellent advice, remarking of a moth which fluttered into a candle, “that creature was its own tormentor, and I believe it
s name was Boswell.” He refuted Berkeley by striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it. As the ship put out to sea Boswell watched him from the deck, whilst he remained “rolling his majestic frame in his usual manner.” And so the friendship was cemented, though Boswell disappeared for a time from the scene, travelled on the Continent, and visited Paoli in Corsica. A friendly letter or two kept up the connexion till Boswell returned in 1766, with his head full of Corsica and a projected book of travels.
In the next year, 1767, occurred an incident upon which Boswell dwells with extreme complacency. Johnson was in the habit of sometimes reading in the King’s Library, and it came into the head of his majesty that he should like to see the uncouth monster upon whom he had bestowed a pension. In spite of his semi-humorous Jacobitism, there was probably not a more loyal subject in his majesty’s dominions. Loyalty is a word too often used to designate a sentiment worthy only of valets, advertising tradesmen, and writers of claptrap articles. But it deserves all respect when it reposes, as in Johnson’s case, upon a profound conviction of the value of political subordination, and an acceptance of the king as the authorized representative of a great principle. There was no touch of servility in Johnson’s respect for his sovereign, a respect fully reconcilable with a sense of his own personal dignity. Johnson spoke of his interview with an unfeigned satisfaction, which it would be difficult in these days to preserve from the taint of snobbishness. He described it frequently to his friends, and Boswell with pious care ascertained the details from Johnson himself, and from various secondary sources. He contrived afterwards to get his minute submitted to the King himself, who graciously authorized its publication. When he was preparing his biography, he published this account with the letter to Chesterfield in a small pamphlet sold at a prohibitory price, in order to secure the copyright.
“I find,” said Johnson afterwards, “that it does a man good to be talked to by his sovereign. In the first place a man cannot be in a passion.” What other advantages he perceived must be unknown, for here the oracle was interrupted. But whatever the advantages, it could hardly be reckoned amongst them, that there would be room for the hearty cut and thrust retorts which enlivened his ordinary talk. To us accordingly the conversation is chiefly interesting as illustrating what Johnson meant by his politeness. He found that the King wanted him to talk, and he talked accordingly. He spoke in a “firm manly manner, with a sonorous voice,” and not in the subdued tone customary at formal receptions. He dilated upon various literary topics, on the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge, on some contemporary controversies, on the quack Dr. Hill, and upon the reviews of the day. All that is worth repeating is a complimentary passage which shows Johnson’s possession of that courtesy which rests upon sense and self-respect. The King asked whether he was writing anything, and Johnson excused himself by saying that he had told the world what he knew for the present, and had “done his part as a writer.” “I should have thought so too,” said the King, “if you had not written so well.” “No man,” said Johnson, “could have paid a higher compliment; and it was fit for a King to pay — it was decisive.” When asked if he had replied, he said, “No, sir. When the King had said it, it was to be. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my sovereign.” Johnson was not the less delighted. “Sir,” he said to the librarian, “they may talk of the King as they will, but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen.” And he afterwards compared his manners to those of Louis XIV., and his favourite, Charles II. Goldsmith, says Boswell, was silent during the narrative, because (so his kind friend supposed) he was jealous of the honour paid to the dictator. But his natural simplicity prevailed. He ran to Johnson, and exclaimed in ‘a kind of flutter,’ “Well, you acquitted yourself in this conversation better than I should have done, for I should have bowed and stammered through the whole of it.”
The years 1768 and 1769 were a period of great excitement for Boswell. He was carrying on various love affairs, which ended with his marriage in the end of 1769. He was publishing his book upon Corsica and paying homage to Paoli, who arrived in England in the autumn of the same year. The book appeared in the beginning of 1768, and he begs his friend Temple to report all that is said about it, but with the restriction that he is to conceal all censure. He particularly wanted Gray’s opinion, as Gray was a friend of Temple’s. Gray’s opinion, not conveyed to Boswell, was expressed by his calling it “a dialogue between a green goose and a hero.” Boswell, who was cultivating the society of various eminent people, exclaims triumphantly in a letter to Temple (April 26, 1768), “I am really the great man now.” Johnson and Hume had called upon him on the same day, and Garrick, Franklin, and Oglethorpe also partook of his “admirable dinners and good claret.” “This,” he says, with the sense that he deserved his honours, “is enjoying the fruit of my labours, and appearing like the friend of Paoli.” Johnson in vain expressed a wish that he would “empty his head of Corsica, which had filled it too long.” “Empty my head of Corsica! Empty it of honour, empty it of friendship, empty it of piety!” exclaims the ardent youth. The next year accordingly saw Boswell’s appearance at the Stratford Jubilee, where he paraded to the admiration of all beholders in a costume described by himself (apparently) in a glowing article in the London Magazine. “Is it wrong, sir,” he took speedy opportunity of inquiring from the oracle, “to affect singularity in order to make people stare?” “Yes,” replied Johnson, “if you do it by propagating error, and indeed it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a general inclination to make people stare, and every wise man has himself to cure of it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare by doing better than others, why make them stare till they stare their eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare by being absurd” — a proposition which he proceeds to illustrate by examples perhaps less telling than Boswell’s recent performance.
The sage was less communicative on the question of marriage, though Boswell had anticipated some “instructive conversation” upon that topic. His sole remark was one from which Boswell “humbly differed.” Johnson maintained that a wife was not the worse for being learned. Boswell, on the other hand, defined the proper degree of intelligence to be desired in a female companion by some verses in which Sir Thomas Overbury says that a wife should have some knowledge, and be “by nature wise, not learned much by art.” Johnson said afterwards that Mrs. Boswell was in a proper degree inferior to her husband. So far as we can tell, she seems to have been a really sensible, and good woman, who kept her husband’s absurdities in check, and was, in her way, a better wife than he deserved. So, happily, are most wives.
Johnson and Boswell had several meetings in 1769. Boswell had the honour of introducing the two objects of his idolatry, Johnson and Paoli, and on another occasion entertained a party including Goldsmith and Garrick and Reynolds, at his lodgings in Old Bond Street. We can still see the meeting more distinctly than many that have been swallowed by a few days of oblivion. They waited for one of the party, Johnson kindly maintaining that six ought to be kept waiting for one, if the one would suffer more by the others sitting down than the six by waiting. Meanwhile Garrick “played round Johnson with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the breasts of his coat, looking up in his face with a lively archness,” and complimenting him on his good health. Goldsmith strutted about bragging of his dress, of which Boswell, in the serene consciousness of superiority to such weakness, thought him seriously vain. “Let me tell you,” said Goldsmith, “when my tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, ‘Sir, I have a favour to beg of you; when anybody asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, Water Lane.’” “Why, sir,” said Johnson, “that was because he knew that the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.” Mr. Filby has gone the way of all tailors and bloom-coloured coats, but some of his bills are preserved. On the day of
this dinner he had delivered to Goldsmith a half-dress suit of ratteen lined with satin, costing twelve guineas, a pair of silk stocking-breeches for £2 5s. and a pair of bloom-coloured ditto for £1 4s. 6d. The bill, including other items, was paid, it is satisfactory to add, in February, 1771.
The conversation was chiefly literary. Johnson repeated the concluding lines of the Dunciad; upon which some one (probably Boswell) ventured to say that they were “too fine for such a poem — a poem on what?” “Why,” said Johnson, “on dunces! It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, sir, hadst thou lived in those days!” Johnson previously uttered a criticism which has led some people to think that he had a touch of the dunce in him. He declared that a description of a temple in Congreve’s Mourning Bride was the finest he knew — finer than anything in Shakspeare. Garrick vainly protested; but Johnson was inexorable. He compared Congreve to a man who had only ten guineas in the world, but all in one coin; whereas Shakspeare might have ten thousand separate guineas. The principle of the criticism is rather curious. “What I mean is,” said Johnson, “that you can show me no passage where there is simply a description of material objects, without any admixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect.” The description of the night before Agincourt was rejected because there were men in it; and the description of Dover Cliff because the boats and the crows “impede yon fall.” They do “not impress your mind at once with the horrible idea of immense height. The impression is divided; you pass on by computation from one stage of the tremendous space to another.”
Complete Works of Samuel Johnson Page 641
